


Break Point

by thedevilchicken



Category: Wimbledon (2004)
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, First Time, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Post-Canon, Tennis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 17:53:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4675907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The problem was Dieter. Or, more precisely, the problem was what Dieter had done. Peter, however, knew just how to fix it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Break Point

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wallflowering](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wallflowering/gifts).



He was right in the middle of a semi-messy if amicable divorce, Lizzie’s dad kept calling to berate him and Peter had a problem. An unrelated problem, in point of fact. An embarrassing problem. A problem he wasn’t entirely sure how to fix, except the natural first step had apparently been to turn up in London three days before Wimbledon.

It was four months to the day since Lizzie had told him _it’s not you, it’s me_ and he’d moved out of the brownstone they’d bought in New York just before she’d had their first child. It was just over a month to the day since she’d told him she’d started seeing a single father from the kids’ after-school tennis club, and Peter hadn’t actually objected since he seemed like a nice enough chap and their kids all got along famously. And, well, that wasn’t actually the problem at all. The problem wasn’t even related.

The problem was Dieter. Or, more precisely, the problem was what Dieter had done. 

It was the same hotel and Peter checked into what he strongly suspected was the exact same room he’d stayed in that year, _the_ year, the year he’d won. It had had a lick of paint or two and the bed linen was a vastly more obnoxious colour but it seemed incredibly familiar as he left his suitcase by the door and took a seat on the bed. 

_Back again_ , he thought. _Older but not necessarily wiser_. And he untied his trainers and he hauled himself into the shower to wash off the feeling of transatlantic air travel and he tried not to think about two weeks ago in his naff new New York flat when Dieter had come to visit, except he’d thought about more or less nothing but that since. Because Dieter had kissed him, and now he wasn’t sure what on earth he was going to do.

Dieter had been tied up with work when Peter had called him with the news that Lizzie had asked him for a divorce, something to do with sports commentary in Germany that he’d been into on and off for years though it wasn’t exactly as if the Prohl family bank balance needed him to go out to work - Peter supposed they’d always had that particular fact in common. 

Then he’d been contracted to give out some kind of award, then there was his parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary and then a charity tennis match and though Peter called to grumble at him over the phone on a near-daily basis, there was always an excuse why he wasn’t in New York and couldn’t be. Until suddenly there’d been no more excuses and Peter had opened the door to his little two-bed apartment with a glorious view of a fire escape over an alley full of bins and there was Dieter Prohl.

“I love what you’ve done with the place,” Dieter said as he swept inside and Peter locked the door. “The half-eaten Chinese takeaway and the half-strung racquet really set off that air of gentlemanly despair.”

“Well, my wife did just leave me, you insensitive bastard,” Peter pointed out, offhand. “I wouldn’t exactly be looking here for spick and span if I were you.” He rubbed at the two day growth of stubble on his jaw and then cleared the racquet and cover and its broken strings away from the other end of the sofa so Dieter could actually sit himself down. “Besides, it’s the maid’s day off. And by the maid I mean me. It’s _my_ day off.”

“I suppose that’s always a valid new career direction,” Dieter said, then gave him an amused-withering look and sat himself down. “But if this place is representative of your work, Peter, you might want to give it some more thought before you make it a permanent change.” He sighed and pulled a pair of used, balled-up sports socks out of the side of the sofa that Peter was unsurprised to find bouncing forthwith off his forehead and into an open container of abandoned chow mein. “You see my point.” 

Peter saw his point. Peter wasn’t even surprised by his point, though he might have been surprised to be on the receiving end of that point in person rather than over the phone and he found himself looking at Dieter as Dieter looked at him, and it was the same as it always had been but it was different at the exact same time and Peter couldn’t for the life of him work out why that was. So they ordered more Chinese food and Dieter put him to shame with his masterful control of his chopsticks and they watched a replay of the highlights from Roland Garros while Peter covered himself liberally in noodles and tried to make it look like he wasn’t sneaking looks in Dieter’s general direction. 

“You’ve been staring at me all night,” Dieter said when tennis had given way to golf and then NASCAR and finally American football, the rules of which Peter was absolutely certain he was never going to understand. It really might as well have been the Eleusinian Mysteries as far as he was concerned and with his smattering of ancient Greek from the dim and distant past of his public school days he sometimes wondered if he might actually have been better off in Eleusis than New York. Either way, it seemed his glances had been well and truly spotted. 

“You know, you wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t been looking at me, too,” Peter said, but it sounded horribly weak even to him and apparently especially to Dieter who shook his head at him mock-sadly. 

“I’m disappointed,” Dieter said. “I thought you were at least going to say you were mystified by how many new wrinkles I’ve got since the last time you saw me.”

“Now you mention it, you _are_ starting to look rather like Carl’s girlfriend’s pug,” Peter said. “It’s unfortunate. I’m told you used to be quite attractive.”

“Some would say I still am,” Dieter said, much more amused than he was defensive. “I’m sorry you’re so blinded by jealousy that you can’t see it. It’s a tragedy, really.”

“Jealousy?” Peter said, with a healthy dose of mock-indignation. “Ha, jealousy!”

“Well, you _are_ rather gangly,” Dieter said. “And incredibly pale for someone who works outdoors. Did you hire someone follow you around with a parasol or are you just so blindingly pale that your skin reflects the sun?”

“Rather pale than glued to a tanning bed, my friend,” Peter said, with a consolatory pat at Dieter’s shoulder that turned into his thumb rubbing at his cheek. “Or is that bronzer? Much more of that and you’ll start to look like David Dickinson.” 

Dieter laughed, smiling, and Peter couldn’t help but smile in return because this was clearly something he’d missed and just how much he’d missed it only came in snatches of meetings now and then, when they ran into each other at events or when Peter and Lizzie and the kids had been over in England and Dieter had managed to tear himself away from work back in Germany or on the tennis tour for a couple of days or even less. They’d been practice partners for years before Peter’s retirement and marriage and while yes, they’d kept in touch, it really hadn’t been the same. He’d missed him. He really had. 

The smile slowly faded from Dieter’s face; Peter realised his hand was still there, his thumb resting at his cheekbone, fingers brushing his neck. The look on Dieter’s face changed into something Peter had never actually seen there before, into something substantially less cocky or teasing or friendly or sympathetic or any of the myriad expressions Peter had seen on his face over the years. Then Dieter moved. Dieter moved closer, quickly, and Dieter kissed him, his mouth on his and his fingers in his hair, and before Peter even had the chance to make a muffled protest, Dieter had pulled away again. It was over just as quickly as it had started.

Peter rubbed at his stubbly jaw. Dieter rubbed at the back of his neck. They looked at each other. 

“What was that, exactly?” Peter said. 

“What was what?” Dieter replied. 

“So that’s how you’re going to deal with this?”

“That’s how I’m going to deal with what?” Dieter said, and glanced away and grimaced. “Oh God, Hammond’s on TV again.”

So that was that, conversation done, and Peter sat back with what he was sure must have been a totally baffled expression on his face as Dieter proceeded to mock Jake Hammond for the next six minutes. They didn’t talk about it at all as they sat there. They didn’t talk about it before Peter apologised for the unkempt state of the guest bedroom and went in there to try to excavate the convertible futon-sofa-bed contrivance from under umpteen strata of boxes of tennis balls and underpants and half a broken tea set. They obviously didn’t talk about it after that because they were lying in separate beds in separate rooms but Peter thought about it. He really _thought_ about it. 

He thought about it for three days while Dieter was there with him, whinging about the state of the kitchen and the fact that there were things growing in the fridge, sneaking glances at him when he thought he wasn’t looking as if there’d be some kind of bright, flashing sign appearing over Dieter’s head to tell him what on earth was going on and what exactly had happened between them. Obviously, there wasn’t. Except then he drove him out to the airport on the morning of the fourth day and stood there awkwardly trying to say something that wouldn’t sound suspiciously like _do you really have to go?_ or even just _I miss you, you arse_ , and Dieter smiled and put his hands on Peter’s shoulders. 

“Take care of yourself,” he said, with a squeeze of both hands, then he shouldered his bag and he turned and he left. And there was a flash of something, a jab of something and suddenly Peter knew. It was worrying how obvious it had been if he’d only been looking in the right place. 

“When was the last time you saw Dieter with a woman?” Peter asked Lizzie later that night, sitting at their dining table - _her_ dining table - after the kids had settled into bed. They weren’t together, no, but it was rather difficult to hate her; after all, it wasn’t as if she’d lied to him. Lizzie was a truly appalling liar; she had a set of ever-increasingly obvious tells that ranged from repeatedly fiddling with her hair as if playing with some kind of lifesize Tennis Barbie to that thing she did with the corners of her mouth whenever she was trying to keep something a secret for more than fifty seconds. Besides, she hadn’t even not told him when she’d dropped the tea set his parents had bought them for their fifth anniversary (because the apartment was apparently “too American”) or when her dad had scheduled himself to stay with them over Christmas, so something like adultery would probably have resulted in spontaneous combustion. 

“An actual real live woman?” Lizzie said as she started to clear away the plates, and Peter rose to help her. “It’s been awhile, I guess.” She paused, narrowing her eyes at him. “Please don’t tell me you’re going to play matchmaker again, Peter. You know what happened last time.”

He did remember. And as he went back home to his rubbishy new apartment he thought it through and it all made a kind of strange sense because Lizzie was right - the last time Peter had tried to set Dieter up on some kind of blind date it had been a fairly unmitigated disaster and Dieter had ended the night covered in a pricey vodka martini tipped over him by one of Lizzie’s friends, sleeping it off in their spare room. And he hadn’t actually known Dieter to have a girlfriend in all the time they’d been acquainted. The occasional one night stand, yes, but that hardly counted. 

He spent the night in bed trying not to think about it. He spent the following day helping kids restring tennis racquets and practicing serves with ladies who lunched and tried not to think about it. Then he whipped up an exciting plate of overcooked spaghetti in lightly burnt sauce and actually succeeded in trying not to think about it for the duration of the meal that also burned the roof of his mouth. Of course, the problem was he _did_ think about it when he went to bed because once he’d turned off the light the image sprang up immediately in glorious Technicolor and once he’d seen it he really, truly couldn’t unsee it. Apparently, he’d rung the bell that could not be unrung. 

“Of course he’s in love with you!” Lizzie said the next night, once the kids were asleep. “Have you even seen the way he looks at you? You two and your epic goddamn bromance, Peter, I swear I was kinda scared he’d be standing there at the wedding yelling _I object!_.”

“I actually thought your dad might,” Peter said. But that was rather a detour away from the topic at hand, as the look on Lizzie’s face told him. He sighed. “Am I the only one who didn’t know?”

“If it’s any consolation, I don’t think Dieter did till we finally said _I do_ ,” she said, and scooched closer on the couch to rest her head down on his shoulder. “Y’know, you were a pretty good husband, as far as frumpy British guys go.”

Peter chuckled. “And you were a fairly good wife, for a belligerent yank.”

She flashed him a grin. “Don’t push your luck, Colt,” she said, then frowned just slightly. “And don’t you dare lose Dieter. You’ll always regret it if you do.” 

She probably didn’t mean it the way it sounded, but the way it sounded put the image straight back into Peter’s head as he walked home, as he took the lift up to his flat, as he took off his clothes and tucked himself into bed. It was still in his head as he closed his eyes and he groaned into his pillow like a total idiot. Perhaps it was true that he wouldn’t have undone their marriage for all the world even if he could’ve gone back to Wimbledon that year and changed it all completely, but that didn’t mean he didn’t think he’d been a prize pillock over it. He should have known. And now he knew, it was really just a question of what he was going to do about it. 

He lay awake and his mind drifted as he had to admit it often did, because apparently he was a bit of a prat that way. It drifted back to the sofa and that most arcane of rituals known as American football, to Dieter’s mouth pressed up awkwardly to his and his eyes flicked open with a jolt as he thought _what if_. What if he hadn’t been so bloody surprised. What if Dieter hadn’t stopped. What if Dieter hadn’t stopped and Peter had kissed him back and what if Dieter had put his hands somewhere that wasn’t just his hair and what if, _what if_ , what if he’d wanted it too. He’d got his hand shoved down his boxers like a perfect wanker and he was telling himself stories about what if Dieter had wanted to do that for him and Christ on a sodding bike he was a bloody idiot. But it took him three nights just like that night before he was even willing to think about doing anything about it. Except when he was willing to think about it, he had to wonder if it hadn’t been in the back of his mind all along.

And so there he was back in London, back in the Dorchester where some of the staff still remembered him and he remembered some of the staff. There he was in the bastard shower because he was trying to postpone the inevitable and it was nothing to do with the flight at all, he knew that, and not just because he’d bypassed the evils of economy travel and agonised over his situation in business class instead. And there he was in a five star hotel trying not to fondle himself in the bathroom while thinking about Dieter bloody Prohl. 

“Right, then,” he told himself aloud as he turned off the shower and forced himself out of it. “Right, then,” he told himself as he pulled on his jeans and his socks and gently despaired over the mess of his hair in the mirror. “Right, then,” he said as he rested his forehead against the bedroom door and then finally, finally opened it. “Here goes.”

Two floors up in the same hotel, he knocked on Dieter’s door. And he waited. Then he knocked again.

“Peter,” Dieter said, halfway between sleepy and surprised he was there. 

“Dieter,” Peter said, like the bad half of a comedy double act. 

“I wasn’t expecting to see you,” Dieter said. “I’d be impressed you found my room number but… Ron told you?”

Peter nodded, rubbing awkwardly at the back of his neck as he wondered how on earth exactly he’d thought this was going to work because clearly it was insanity. “I think he might be the most indiscreet man I’ve ever known,” Peter said. “Remind me why he’s my agent?”

“Because he’s surprisingly good at his job even when he’s being a gigantic tosser,” Dieter said, knowingly, and that much Peter knew was true. 

“Good point, well made.” Peter frowned. “Can I come in or are you going to make me stand at the door like a complete arsehole?”

“To be honest, I thought I might make you wait there until you realise it’s past 11pm and I answered the door in my underwear,” Dieter said. 

“Oh,” Peter said. “Oh.” His eyes widened just a bit as he realised that what Dieter had said was absolutely accurate, about both the time and Dieter’s present state of dress or undress as the case may be, though the time was a bit harder to discern when his watch was still several hours behind than the fact that Dieter was shirtless in a pair of skimpy, stretchy boxers. “You could have put something on, you know.”

“I was more concerned about the fact I’d been woken up in the middle of the night by some lunatic knocking at my door,” Dieter said with a twinkle of amusement, “but now you mention it, my prudish friend, you’ve seen me in less.”

“In the showers or the changing rooms or the steam room, or...“ Peter paused, drumming his fingers on the doorframe. “Why are you always naked around me?” 

Dieter chuckled but leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest. “Did you want something, Peter?” 

“I, um,” Peter started, then cleared his throat like a cretin; Dieter raised his brows and Peter looked away, looked at his shoes, looked at his watch, looked into the room behind Dieter because every single little iota of a plan that he’d come up with on the flight had apparently trickled out of his ear along with his dignity. And then, kicking himself, he said, “I just wondered if you’d fancy a quick game in the morning, that’s all. Didn’t notice the time.”

“For old times’ sake?”

“Something like that, yes.”

Dieter shrugged. “Sure, why not. Breakfast first?” 

“Downstairs at eight?”

“I’ll see you then.” Peter turned to walk away, like a fool, like a total and utter fool, a miserable fool who’d just entirely failed in the mission for which he’d flown across the Atlantic. “And Peter?” He turned back and Dieter gave him a sardonic little smile. “It’s great to see you but try not to wake me up in the middle of the night again. I might answer the door naked next time.”

Peter just gaped at Dieter stupidly as he closed the door, apparently completely unable to muster a witty retort because this wasn’t the way he’d seen the conversation going - he’d chickened out, of course, inevitably - and that was _not_ the image he’d expected to have in his head as he slinked away back to his room, tail tucked firmly between his legs. 

They ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant with the occasional interruption from guests seeking Peter’s autograph, something that apparently Dieter found terribly amusing as he sat there sipping his coffee and watching with a blithe smile. Then they drove out to Wimbledon in Dieter’s awful hire car with a sticky clutch and air con that clunked and with a little wheedling, a little luck and a little trading on their good names, they managed to sneak out onto the practice courts. Peter supposed it was lucky he’d brought a racquet with him or it might’ve been the single worst alibi he’d ever tried to give himself.

“You’ve got better,” Peter called over the net, two points down. 

“Ironically,” Dieter called back, with a grin, “you’ve got worse.” 

It wasn’t much of a game and it wasn’t really supposed to be, the two of them there in tennis whites and still decent players if not exactly Nadal and Federer but after all, they were both pushing forty by then. They drew a little bit of a crowd and Peter half suspected there’d be a photo or two posted on websites by the afternoon but that hardly mattered because it was fun, he had to admit, being back there with Dieter, the familiar banter over the net, playing against a real life adult for once and not just the kids at the tennis club, as great as that usually was. He did still have the occasional entertaining set with Lizzie, but he couldn’t say that really counted - if she was relaxed enough that she didn’t shout at him at least once per game then he knew her heart really wasn’t in it, and she’d refrained from shouting for some time.

They showered afterwards, Peter’s eyes firmly on anything that wasn’t Dieter; they had lunch after that and then sat around at a table in a beer garden under a parasol with a couple of old friends they’d picked up on the courts. The weather was surprisingly good though obviously the start of the tournament would probably see the end of that as was traditional, and Dieter was apparently feeling chatty and Peter knew he was being substantially less than sociable but apparently he couldn’t stop looking at Dieter’s hands as he lifted his glass, his mouth as he sipped from his half pint of beer and then struck up a mock-complaint about how German beer was clearly superior. He’d never spent so much time just _looking_ at him before, at least not with the particular notions in his head that were currently lodged there. He felt like a strange sort of voyeur. 

“You’ve been uncharacteristically quiet all afternoon,” Dieter told him as the stepped back into the hire car to drive back to the hotel. “Usually you could talk for England. You know, that might have been a particularly good career choice.”

Dieter started the car and Peter pulled on his seat belt. “How would you feel about dinner later?” he asked, instead of addressing the sarcasm at hand. “If you’re not too busy sowing your wild oats tonight, of course.”

Dieter chuckled. “It’s an interesting euphemism,” he said, pulling out of the car park. “The hotel restaurant at seven?” That seemed fair, a date but not a date. 

They ate together and then went out for a drink together and apparently two days before Wimbledon everyone everywhere was a tennis fan who remembered Peter’s incredible run to victory even though it was nearly eight years ago by then. They walked back to the hotel through Kensington Gardens after dark, past the fountains where Lizzie had tiptoed barefoot and happy one night before they’d really been a thing and he looked at Dieter and Dieter looked at him as they slowed to a stop on the damp paving stones.

“I brought Lizzie here once,” Peter said. 

Dieter nodded with a sympathetic smile as he reached over and squeezed Peter’s shoulder, but Peter wasn’t looking for sympathy. He was apparently looking for something he was struggling to ask for even then, even under stars by a fountain in a park where it should’ve been easy to be romantic except as the moment drew out and Peter opened his mouth to say something, though what that something was he had not the very first clue, Dieter gave his cheek a quick pat and turned away. 

“Do you miss her?” Dieter said, glancing back over his shoulder as he started in the direction of Hyde Park, and the winding paths back to the hotel. 

“Well, I wasn’t exactly looking to be rid of her,” Peter replied, jogging a few steps to catch up. “You’ve never been married.”

Dieter looked at him as they walked, sidelong, silhouetted by streetlamps. “No, I’ve not,” he said, then turned away again. 

“Why?” Peter asked. “Just never met the right girl?”

“I suspect I never will.”

“Why?”

Dieter stopped abruptly and Peter stopped a pace later, turned back to look at him and Dieter’s expression was that thing again, that thing he’d not been able to place the first time back in New York until it was far too late and the moment had passed. Dieter looked at him and he looked at Dieter and it should’ve been that moment, right then and there, but Dieter just smiled a small, rueful smile and then it was too late. It was too late for the second time. 

“You know why,” Dieter said, shoving his hands into his pockets. Then he turned and he walked away again. All Peter could do was follow close behind.

“Breakfast tomorrow?” Peter said, back inside the hotel in the bright reception lights, loitering by the lifts as they waited. 

Dieter looked at him for a moment, like he was trying to decide if he was serious or not, then he shrugged and he smiled as the lift doors opened. “Early,” he said. “Unlike some people who shall of course remain nameless, I’m here to work.”

Three days of that followed. Three days of Dieter working, German commentary on the matches at Wimbledon and Peter wandered by there a few times while Dieter was interviewing or being interviewed and wondered how he’d managed to forget every last scrap of GCSE German he’d learned while travelling with a German, except the rude words and frankly they hadn’t been part of the syllabus anyway. Then, later, they met for dinner in the hotel restaurant and chatted and walked and drank and Peter tried not to think about the last Wimbledon he’d played, about the matches or about Lizzie or about anything that had followed and he found it surprisingly easy. He’d been there with Dieter so many times before that, back when he was actually still 11th in the world and not 119th and then after that, sharing rooms sometimes like they’d done the fourth year back when they’d been closer to twenty than thirty and now forty, when Dieter had snored and kept him awake half the night, every night, though he suspected that was more about his own nerves than about the fact Dieter snored like a drain sometimes. 

Three days of that, Peter trying to find a moment to bring up a subject that he’d never imagined bringing up at all before Dieter’s visit to New York, because apparently he’d been a thick-headed, dimwitted sod who’d somehow managed to completely overlook the fact that his practice partner wanted a bit more than to be his practice partner and at some point he’d started thinking along those same lines himself. They’d spent years together, they’d met each other’s parents though Peter still wasn’t sure that the Prohls were particularly fond of him even if Dieter assured him he was just taking the word _Dummkopf_ too literally. They’d driven and flown and one absurd but ultimately memorable weekend just before Roland Garros ridden a tandem together, and apparently it had never occurred to him that perhaps, just perhaps, there was something more than friendly about it. 

And so there he was, the fourth night, knocking on Dieter’s door at 11pm. 

“Do you know what time it is?” Dieter asked, slumping against the doorframe though there was fortunately a total lack of heat to his complaint.

“Well, it’s about six minutes past the time you said you might open the door naked,” Peter said, glancing at his watch then back up at Dieter who was _not_ naked but did still look half-asleep. 

“I can always go back in and rectify the situation” Dieter said, teasing, tucking one thumb into the waistband of his boxers and pushing down just a little with a half-sleepy smile. “You’d have liked that, perhaps?”

Peter took a breath, leaning there with one hand either side of the doorframe, maybe closer than he should’ve been but at least that meant he didn’t have to watch Dieter’s hand there still holding the elastic waistband of his boxers at least two inches lower than was strictly decent, especially in the corridor of an upmarket hotel. 

“Maybe I would have,” he said, carefully, and Dieter let the waistband ping back up into place as his smile disappeared in just a fraction of a second. 

“Peter--”

“Look, I think--”

“Peter, you don’t--”

“Dieter, will you just--”

“What are you--”

And Peter kissed him. He stepped forward, closed the last remaining foot or so between them both and kissed him, hands at his cheeks then in his hair then one arm around his waist and he _kissed him_ , Dieter’s mouth warm against his, his heart hammering like he’d just walked out onto centre court in his underwear. And Dieter kissed him back, arms around his waist, one hand finding its way under his shirt to the small of his back and pressing there firmly, hotly. It was good, a little awkward to start but Dieter knew what he was doing and Peter’s hands dipped down over Dieter’s bare back to find the curve of his arse and then oh God, oh _God_ , he could feel himself getting what was absolutely going to be the single most embarrassing erection of his entire life, even worse than the time he’d managed to get a stiffy in Mr Havisham’s English class or in his second girlfriend’s parents’ swimming pool before the family picnic that time when he was seventeen. 

“Oh God,” he said, stepping back and nearly tripping and Dieter frowned at him. “Oh God, what am I doing?” 

“I thought that was fairly obvious,” Dieter said, looking at him somewhat like he’d just announced plans to swim the channel or marry the bellboy. And Dieter was so obviously half-hard in his boxers himself and his face was flushed and oh God, oh hell, oh bloody _hell_ , he couldn’t do it. 

“I’m sorry,” Peter said, with a hopeless flap of his hands, then fled like a total coward down the corridor as fast as his gangly legs would carry him. He certainly didn’t have a crafty wank in his hotel room bathroom once the door was locked, practically shaking when he came. He absolutely, positively didn’t wonder why Dieter hadn’t come after him because he didn’t want him to, of course, no, not at all. And most of all he didn’t go to bed wondering if he’d just royally bollocksed up the best friendship he’d ever had in his life, and lost something the immeasurable importance of which he hadn’t even realised until that precise moment. If he’d had any doubts at all, that was the instant he lost them; he was smitten and he’d fucked it up.

They didn’t meet for breakfast in the morning and Peter supposed that wasn’t exactly surprising under the circumstances. He didn’t have much of an appetite himself, if he were honest about it, picking at what he was sure was a delicious full English breakfast though he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why he’d ordered it in the first place. 

He saw him a couple of times through the day, around the club, interviewing, speaking to a couple of mutual acquaintances and one of them waved Peter over but he couldn’t go, he just couldn’t, not when Dieter looked at him and his face dropped the way it did. Then they didn’t meet for dinner and Peter just sat in his room watching the tennis highlights on the BBC while he picked at some room service ravioli that he didn’t really feel like eating except his stomach had been grumbling for hours. 

He saw him at the reception desk in the morning; they looked at each other for the briefest of moments before Dieter turned and walked outside and Peter couldn’t decide if what he wanted to do was catch up and catch his arm and try to talk or just let him go and so he let him go. He went over to Wimbledon and with his tickets from a called-in favour or two he watched a couple of mixed doubles matches, had strawberries with Ron while he talked on the phone, then didn’t have dinner with Dieter in the evening. He went back to his room and tried to muster the enthusiasm to masturbate in the shower but alas, all he could think about was the disaster of his own making that was his friendship with a certain German ex-tennis player. So much for not losing him. He had to do something about it. He really, _really_ had to do something about it.

“Dieter!” he called across reception in the morning. Dieter gave him a dark, warning glance and stalked out the door. 

“Dieter!” he called across a walkway after a press conference the day after that, and Dieter just walked away. 

And then there he was the following day, standing outside Dieter’s door again. He knocked. He knocked again. He knocked _again_ , and eventually the door opened. 

“Peter,” Dieter said. 

“Dieter,” Peter said. And he stood there like a useless lump because apparently everything he’d thought he might say had evaporated right out of his head and left him, as was traditional by that point, stupid. 

“Look, Peter, it’s late…” Dieter said, with a shake of his head, one hand still on the door as if about to shut it in Peter’s face. “I’m working tomorrow. What are you here for?”

“Well, you’ve been ignoring me.”

“I think we both know why that is.”

“And I think we both know I’m an imbecile.”

Dieter smiled, just faintly, before he could stop himself. “I think we’ve both known that for a very long time,” he said. “But I’m glad that you’re finally acknowledging it.”

“Can I come in?”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

Dieter raised his brows. “You know, that would only work if I actually did know why. Which I don’t.”

“Well, it’s mostly because I want to apologise.”

“Apologise for what?”

“You know what!”

Dieter shrugged. “I can think of a few reasons,” he said. “Can you be specific?”

“Because I’m an arse,” Peter said, with a surprisingly expansive, exasperated gesticulation that accompanied it. “I’m an unutterable, inexcusable arse and I’m here to beg for your forgiveness.”

Dieter crossed his arms over his chest, tilting his head. He looked amused and Peter supposed he couldn’t blame him, and really that was a start at least. “And?”

“And I understand if you want me to bugger off back to my own room but I’d like you to stop ignoring me, at least. I might deserve it but it’s driving me round the bend.”

Dieter raised his brows. “ _And_?”

Peter sighed. “And I’ve been thinking about you in the shower for three sodding weeks now, Dieter.”

There was a pause then, a long one, awkward as Peter ducked his head and scuffed the expensive carpet with his inexpensive trainers. Then Dieter chuckled. “Thinking about me _in the shower_ or thinking about _me in the shower_?” he asked, brows raised as he leaned there casually in the doorway, arms still crossed over his bare chest. 

“Either?” Peter said. “Both? Does it matter? I’m trying to say something I think might be really rather important and you really want to talk about whether I’m thinking about you while I’m in the shower or about you in the shower while I’m…”

“While you’re…?”

“You know.”

“I know,” Dieter said. “And you know I know. But let’s just pretend I don’t for a second.”

“Well, while I’m… you know.” He frowned harder. He waved his hands vaguely. “You _know_!”

Dieter smiled placidly. “Masturbation isn’t a dirty word, Peter.” 

Peter was blushing what he was sure was a rather unflattering shade of tomato red by that point and dropped his head into his hands to groan out loud. But Dieter stepped closer and caught his wrists in his hands, teased his hands away from his face and then he leaned up, slow and cautious, and brushed his lips against Peter’s bright red cheek. 

“If you blush any harder you’re going to have an aneurysm,” Dieter murmured by Peter’s ear and Peter chuckled. 

“If I keel over dead right now it’ll be your fault,” he said, and before he could say anything else Dieter pressed his mouth to his, just for a second but it did effectively shut him up.

“If you keel over dead you’re going to do it in your own room,” Dieter said as he stepped back with a tilt of his head, and then he shooed him with one hand. “Go on. I’ll see you for breakfast in the morning.” 

“But I thought--”

“Oh, I know what you thought,” Dieter said, with a knowing nod. “You thought you were going to get lucky tonight.”

“I thought it might be a possibility, if you stopped treating me like some kind of persona non grata long enough for me to apologise for being a simple sod.”

“Incredibly simple.” Dieter smiled cheerfully. “Now for God’s sake let me sleep.” He paused, then stepped back up close and pressed his mouth to Peter’s jaw, to his chin, to his cheekbone, to his mouth. “Go away and make sure you’re sure, and we’ll see how lucky you get tomorrow.”

It was a long night when Peter got back to his room. It was a long morning after that and a long breakfast after _that_ , Dieter sitting there smiling as he sipped his coffee and Peter tried not to let all the blood drain to certain parts of his anatomy that were usually best not displayed in public if he didn’t want to meet a charming representative of the local constabulary. They drove out to Wimbledon together after that, Dieter chattering over the radio and Peter had a feeling that although it would’ve cost significantly more to take a taxi just like he had while Dieter had been pointedly ignoring him, it might’ve been easier on his heart. Easier at least than moments waiting at red lights or momentarily stuck in early-morning traffic when Dieter casually reached over to run his hand over Peter’s thigh, still talking as if he weren’t driving him not so very bloody slowly out of his mind. Which he was. He very definitely was. 

Peter somehow blagged his way into the women’s semis while Dieter was working but it wasn’t exactly the tennis that was on his mind. He was thinking about dinner and possibly something rather different _after_ dinner and the time about twelve years before that when they’d both been drunk before the Australian Open and they’d ended up sleeping in the same bed and he should’ve known then, when Dieter hadn’t kicked him out of bed in the morning and they’d stayed there for at least another hour, hungover and tangled up with each other and with the sheets. He really should have known.

And then, later, after they’d been rained on extensively and eventually retreated to the hotel after postponed matches, they had dinner and they talked about the day’s play and they talked about their predictions for the finals and they ate and they laughed and then they were finished and Peter paid the bill. And then Dieter looked at him a little differently to the way he’d been looking at him through the rest of the day. 

“Have you thought about it?” he asked. 

“Thought about what, exactly?” Peter said. 

“You _know_ what.”

Peter conceded the point with a sort of half-nod. “It’s been hard to think about anything else.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Are you sure?”

“No, I just thought I’d wind you up and piss you off about it.” Peter paused, playing with his napkin, then gave Dieter an awkward sort of smile. “Look, I’m sure. Apparently I’m also a sarcastic sod, but I’m sure.”

Dieter nodded solemnly. “That part about the sarcasm I already knew,” he said, and stood. “Let’s go upstairs before one of us comes to his senses.”

The walk through the restaurant was somewhat akin to torture and the ride upstairs in the lift was actually worse, as if Peter had thought that was humanly possible, standing there at opposite sides as they looked at each other around an elderly couple both carrying Wimbledon programmes. They stepped out on Dieter’s floor and left the couple to their discussion of the sad and sorry state of British tennis and Dieter opened the door with his keycard. 

“Are you going to invite me in?” Peter asked, hanging back in the doorway, still outside the room. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realise your middle name was Dracula,” Dieter said with an amused shake of his head. Then he pulled off his polo shirt and put his hands on his hips, suddenly and tantalisingly shirtless. “For God’s sake come in before I expose myself to any unsuspecting passersby.”

So he went inside and he closed the door behind him as Dieter toed off his shoes and then discarded his socks on the floor. 

For a start, it was like getting changed for a match or after a match or after training or any of the other times they’d had to take off clothes in each other’s general vicinity because Peter had to admit that had happened with alarming regularity over the years. For a start, Dieter teased him about how pale he still was even though he’d been outside in the sun for nearly a fortnight and it wasn’t as if he lived under a permanent rain cloud there in New York, and Peter told Dieter if he spent much more time out in the sun he’d turn into one of those shrivelled-up old sun lounger hoggers on the Costa del Sol that everyone always hated. 

But then, well. Then they were both standing there in their underwear looking at each other like they’d no idea how they’d come to be there, no idea what they were doing, no idea what this was and Peter had the bizarre urge to just bolt for the door, the rest of his clothing be damned. After all, he supposed it wouldn’t have been the first time in his life he’d very nearly streaked down a hotel corridor. But then Dieter moved and he pulled off his boxers and he stood there with his hands on his hips like a challenge and Peter had no idea where to look so he eyed his own clothes then the bed then the terrible floral painting on the wall, and then he closed his eyes and he groaned at himself. 

“Bugger,” he said, and shook his head. “Just... bugger.” Then he pulled off his boxers and stood there like a prize lemon, feeling his cheeks start to burn. 

“My parents are right,” Dieter said, as he came in closer. “You’re an idiot.”

“You said they said they _liked_ me!” Peter mock-protested.

“And they do,” Dieter said, smiling faintly as he stepped right in close, as he settled his hands at Peter’s hips. “But they also think you’re an idiot. A _bumbling_ idiot. Based on the evidence at hand, I might find it hard to disagree.” He chuckled lowly, one hand straying down and taking Peter firmly in hand. “Of course, based on the evidence at _this_ hand…”

“Subtle,” Peter said, not quite sure what to do with his hands as he felt himself reacting in a very predictable way to the way Dieter was currently touching him. “Very subtle.”

Dieter shrugged and moved away, left him there as he walked across the room and Peter watched him go with a flutter of his pulse. “I think subtlety might be slightly overrated,” he said, stretching out on top of the very neatly made bed and while Peter watched, Dieter curled his fingers around the base of his own very obvious erection. 

“Jesus Christ, Dieter,” Peter muttered under his breath, watching him do it, watching him rub the pad of his thumb in circles over the tip as he lounged there, a nonchalant smile on his face. But then Peter joined him, knelt on the mattress and then shifted around and shifted on top of him in a rather awkward, haphazard heap and when he looked down at Dieter he could see there was nothing nonchalant about him. He was just as anxious as Peter was, just as hesitant as he slipped his hands over Peter’s back, his pulse racing just as quickly when they kissed and their noses bumped and they both laughed tensely. 

“You’ve done this before, yes?” Dieter said, his voice strained as his hands went down to Peter’s arse and squeezed, then squeezed again a little more surely. 

“Chap I met at university,” Peter replied. “Tennis team. Communal showers and all that.”

“You’re a public schoolboy stereotype, you know.”

“Oh, every inch of it,” Peter agreed, flushed and hard and scared damn near out of his wits by what was happening. “You?”

Dieter gave him a slightly exasperated look. “What do _you_ think?” he said. 

“I should’ve known,” Peter replied. “You Germans and your lederhosen…”

Dieter smacked him across the shoulder. “You Brits and your appalling sense of humour,” he said. “Next you’ll be mocking my strudel.” 

“Is that a euphemism?”

“ _Everything_ is a euphemism,” Dieter said. “It has been for a very long time. Don’t you think it’s time we did something about that?”

Peter feigned thinking that through and then he kissed him, which he thought was probably answer enough for the time being. 

There was apparently a tube of unopened lube and an unopened box of condoms sitting on the bedside cabinet, just in case, to which Dieter eventually tried to direct Peter’s attention; sadly, at the time he was a little too busy trying to persuade himself that the sky wouldn’t fall in if he touched parts of Dieter that it wasn’t generally advisable to touch if one wanted to remain friends. Dieter, however, smacked Peter around the head with the box of condoms and Peter pulled back onto his knees between Dieter’s spread thighs with the box in one hand as he rubbed his head and then set about the packaging. 

“Bugger,” Peter said, apparently having just as much trouble with the cellophane wrapping around the box as he’d had with every other condom box he’d encountered in his entire life and it was _always_ at an inopportune moment. He supposed no one really thought to unbox the johnnys before they actually needed them, however, so he couldn’t really be blamed, though Dieter seemed to find the whole thing terribly amusing as he lay there, lounging, watching, hands under his head. 

“Give it to me,” Dieter said in the end, with a long-suffering sigh and a hint of a smile, and whipped off the plastic wrap in about three seconds flat. He pulled one out. “Can you open this yourself or might that defeat you, too?” He went ahead and opened it anyway without waiting for an answer. “Do you want me to put it on for you?”

Peter paused there on his knees, his hands spread on his thighs as he watched Dieter pull the condom from the wrapper with a little jolt of adrenaline shooting straight down to parts unmentionable. Then he nodded. “Yes, actually,” he said, with a glance from erection to condom to Dieter’s surprised face. “I think I’d rather like that.”

Dieter stopped smiling. He moved and he stopped smiling but it didn’t seem to be because he disliked the idea at all; he shifted around and he got up on his knees, sat back on his heels as he looked Peter over. Then he shuffled in closer and he gave Peter’s cock a not-quite-tentative stroke, took an unsteady breath as he rolled the condom on over the length of him with hands that were just as unsteady. Then he kissed him and he stroked him and he uncapped the lube and stroked him with that, too, and Peter’s hands were suddenly everywhere he could reach as they knelt there together, not quite desperate but so very nearly there. They were really going to do it. They were _really_ going to do it. 

And they did. Dieter turned and went down on his hands and his knees and Peter choked back laughter because it was so completely insane as he ran his hands over Dieter’s thighs and his back and then over his arse and he slicked his fingers and rubbed them between Dieter’s cheeks. Dieter cursed in German - Peter’s alternative GCSE syllabus apparently served him well there - and ducked his head down onto his hands over the pillows and the bloody litany of muffled dirty German just made Peter tease the tip of one finger into him and then he decided sod it, pun possibly intended, and he replaced the tip of his finger with the tip of his cock and Dieter’s German just got filthier and hoarser and tenser by the second until Peter pushed into him all the sodding way. He’d never wanted anything - or any _one_ \- more in his life then he wanted Dieter then.

“I understood every word of that,” Peter said, somewhat surprised his voice still functioned in an intelligible manner. 

Dieter glanced back at him over his shoulder, his expression dark and hot and all the more startling for it because Peter had never seen him look like that before. “I hope you did,” he said. “You’ll know exactly what I want you to do.”

He did and so he did it, leaning forward with his hands on the headboard for leverage and Dieter pushing back against him and yes, so he hadn’t actually done this since a few tennis-fuelled nights once upon a time at university but Dieter didn’t seem to care if he was rusty or not. Dieter pushed up onto his knees, hands at the headboard right by Peter’s and they just kept on, Peter’s hips pushing up tight against him, one of Peter’s hands going down to stroke at him but Dieter clucked his tongue and batted his hand away so he could do it himself in long, hard strokes. 

And after that it didn’t take much longer because frankly they hadn’t been trying to take their time; Peter was fairly convinced they wouldn’t have been able to do that even if they’d wanted to, with the way they’d started and they way they went on, the way Dieter tightened around him and cursed rather colourfully as he came and aside from one match back in their twenties when an annoying Bulgarian chap had beaten him in straight sets on a clay court that had entirely ingrained itself into every fibre of every pair of socks he’d owned, Peter suspected he’d never seen Dieter so completely lacking in calm. Judging from the way he finished approximately fifteen seconds after that himself with a string of what sounded very much like _oh Jesus, oh God, Dieter, fucking hell!_ , he must have liked it, must have enjoyed it. And Dieter apparently found that breathlessly hilarious. Which was fine, because honestly Dieter had seen him make a bigger fool of himself on several occasions.

“I’m fairly sure I’m not _actually_ God,” Dieter said, condom discarded, the two of them stretched out side-by-side on the bed, on top of the sheets but didn’t actually seem to matter with how flushed and hot their skin still was. 

“Well, you do have the ego for it,” Peter said, turning his head to look at him, and Dieter did the same. Peter sighed and brushed the back of his hand against Dieter’s hip, the proximity and intimacy new but still somehow familiar. “You know I’m going home in three days.”

“I know,” Dieter said. “And I’ll be there in six.”

“You will?”

“Well, someone needs to make sure your maid keeps your flat clean,” Dieter said. “And by maid I mean you. Besides, I already have a job lined up, so it might be rude to stand them up at this point.”

Peter shook his head as he closed his eyes and suddenly it all made sense, everything from the moment Dieter had left if not before. “Lizzie told you what I was planning, didn’t she.”

“Of course she did,” Dieter replied. “She may be your soon-to-be-ex-wife, but that doesn’t make her the Wicked Witch of the West.”

“And you’ve been letting me stew about this anyway.”

“I like to think you needed it. Just to be sure.”

“Then remind me to thank her.”

Dieter smiled. “I already have.”

They talked for a while longer after that, pulled on some underwear and ordered beer from room service and watched the day’s tennis highlights on the television while they drank sitting up in bed against the headboard. And once that finished they zapped off the TV and turned off the lights and just about managed not to knock each other unconscious as they bumped heads in the dark on their way into a kiss. 

“You know I…” Peter said, rubbing his forehead as they settled down. “Well, you know.”

Dieter chuckled lowly as he proceeded to steal the sheets. “Yes, you idiot,” he said. “I know.”

There’d be a couple more days of tennis before the end of the competition, the finals with trophies and champions and Peter felt an odd sort of nostalgia for it, not really for the win he’d had but for the life, for the tour, for practice matches and times when they’d been caught in sudden downpours and played through the rain for the hell of it. There’d be a couple more days of tennis and then Peter would go home to New York because apparently that was home now, he’d go back to his job and his kids and his soon-to-be-ex-wife who was apparently a much better matchmaker than he’d ever been. Of course, he hadn’t tried sending himself on a blind date with Dieter and if he had then he might’ve found he had substantially more success. 

He wasn’t concerned for their friendship anymore, as Dieter drifted off to sleep and snored softly to himself. After all, they’d been joined at the hip for years before this had ever happened at all. They’d been the best of friends through thick and thin and even if everything had changed, nothing had. 

Peter closed his eyes, one arm strewn over Dieter’s chest and not just because he’d stolen almost every inch of the bed linen. There was no way on God’s green earth he was going to lose him now, not when their past had caught their present and begun to merge into their future and that was _their_ future, the two of them together, with Dieter's parents who apparently still thought Peter was a blithering idiot and Peter's ex-wife who didn't love him the way she had but apparently did still love him in her own interesting, inimitable way. They'd be fine, with a bit of luck at least. They'd been lucky so far.

And besides, Peter thought, now he didn’t have to miss him anymore.


End file.
